Off to Poland, Suddenly

I’ve been in Berlin now for 12 days or so, and I’m totally not ready to leave. I absolutely love it. But I know I’ll be back when my friends come to visit (if I don’t end up moving there first,) so it’s time to explore another place.

I met a cool Polish gal, Marta, at the Black & White Hostel in Milan last month, and we’ve been keeping in touch. Turns out she only lives a couple hours drive away in Poznan. So, last minute as usual, I’m off to Poland.

I’d like to explore more of Germany first, but: A) I’m close, B) I’ll be back to Germany for sure, and C) I’d like to buy some typically expensive shit, and Poland is even cheaper than Germany. Plus, I have to be in London by the 19th for a few concerts I already have tickets for (article forthcoming.)

Thursday, April 12:

Saturday works best for both of us. Checking my usual cheap-transportation routes, I’m only able to find a couple rideshares on BlaBlaCar and Carpooling.de, and they’re going for €15-20 ($20-26.) I send out a couple emails, get a positive response on the best one, showing up in Poznan right after Marta gets off work (she’s a Molecular Biologist – how cool is that?) A quick check on the trains show they’re going for around €35, so rideshare is the best bet.

I book my Ryan Air flight from Berlin to London for €37 ($52) for next Thursday and go out to explore more of Berlin on foot, including one last trip to the absinthe bar.

Friday, April 13:

I get an email from dude, saying he’s not going to Poznan after all. Sweet.

A bit of searching on the Googles turns up a bus service called PolskiBus going from Berlin to Poznan on Saturday for 65zl (that’s Polish Zloty,) which works out to about $20 each way. Nice. The ride takes over four hours, which is much slower than a regular drive or train ride, plus it gets into town 3 hours before Marta gets off work, and she can’t get off early. But when on a long-term backpacking trip, cheaper is almost always better – convenience be damned. Booked.

Some nighttime exploration with a group of French people lands us in an underground gallery filled with GWAR-style moving and singing robots laying down some industrial music, a creepy abandoned ice factory on the river about to be knocked down, and a very cool hacker’s lair and bar called c-base, which is styled after a very sci-fi-looking spaceship. Read more about c-base in my last article: c-base Spacestation. This place is actually pretty badass. “Ein bier, bitte…”

Saturday, April 14:

Ugh…very little sleep, slight hangover. Eat, piss, smoke, brush teeth, get everything together, run to post office to mail some stuff back home, run back, rush to bus station – barely made it in time for the 10:30 departure (mainly because I had no idea where the fuck I was supposed to go.) Luckily, the bus station was pretty close to the hostel. I’m on the bus as I write this, having passed the German-Polish border about an hour ago. We stopped in a small town for a half hour and I stopped into a fancy restaurant, had a nice bowl of beef dumpling soup and a large beer for about $4.50 – that’s what I’m talking about.